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The Nature of Sligo | The Nature of Sligo: Kids Own Publishing
2008-11-27
The Nature of Sligo
Week 3. 24th November 2008
We began the morning by refreshing our minds to Klee`s work and quickly went through the slide projection focusing on his techniques and ideas. This had the added benefit for children who had missed the previous week.
I also had homework to do as there were a number of plants that I could not identify. These were the fern `Harts Tongue` and the flower `Cow Parsley` which was added to their note-book.
I devised a number of mark-making exercises which included:
how to make spinning top drawings (a device that I had made, which is a circular piece of card with a hole in the center for the pencil to sit through) It is a fun exercise and it frees up the hand and the mind.
I brought in graphite powder which was dissolved in hot water and a water-color medium. This work is inspired by Robert Morris `Blind-Time` drawings. The children dipped their finger tips into this mixture and set about making marks in their sketch books, some with their eyes closed.
Again the objective of these exercises is to open up to the children the elaborate and wonderful world of drawing and mark-making. Thomas and I also allow discussions amongst the group freely when making.
Each child names their work and we encourage them to be as imaginative as possible. All the works are displayed at the end of each exercise.
We also discuss the theme of this project and encourage the children to think about ideas around this and what we could do and make. It is important that they take ownership and construct the project for themselves as a group activity.
So as an exercise we asked the children to come up with an idea/theme/word and to bring this to class next week. Like the bank of images we are building through the camera and sketch-books we also want to build associated words, thoughts and ideas that will inform the project next term.
In the afternoon we went out on a nature-walk and made drawings of the landscape. Concentrating on the idea of the line as contour that constructs the overall form of what they are looking at rather then details.
I really wanted to impress on the children the act of seeing which is probably more important for now then the act of making.
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